Friday, December 15, 2006

Geeky Dive Watch Videos

As mentioned earlier, I haven't got any underwater photos to share from this dive trip because I haven't got into underwater photography. (Yet)

I do have something analogous, and far geekier: the playback from my dive watch of my two favourite dives.

The watch in question is a Swatch Scuba, which shows depth and time underwater, and allows playback of the last dive. I use a Suunto Mosquito for my dive computer, but got this particular Swatch as a backup. The hour (short) hand is showing depth on the inner scale (which runs clockwise from 0 to 40 metres). The minute (long) hand is showing time elapsed, measured on the outside bezel (running clockwise from 0 to 60 minutes). What you're seeing in the playback is a sped-up replay of the whole dive: watch the short hand to see the dive profile (depth over time)

This first dive was the second last of the trip, at a place called Koh Ha. We dove early in the morning, and ended the dive swimming into a cave, through to a second cave, and surfacing in a pocket of air. Fantastic way to start the morning: on the playback, you can see the depth rise up to 0 metres as we surfaced in the cave before going back down to 5 metres and then ascending once more.

This second video is of the last dive of the trip, at Bida Nai near Phi Phi, the longest dive at 63 minutes. We spotted a leopard shark on and off throughout this dive, and were almost surfacing when we spotted it on the sea bed, and went back down to have one last look: you can see on the playback that we had ascended to 5 metres before returning to 14 metres one last time.